Security is good and bots annoy the hell out of me as well, but this is really the case of going over the top. I tried to register to the forums of the popular Mac torrent software Transmission. However, I got this captcha to make sure I was human:

I challenge you to read it. I could make out 2NVR and a T at the end… but it’s supposedly six characters. I don’t consider myself visually impaired – as the site suggests quite cheekily – or otherwise challenged, yet after three tries and three different but equally frustrating captchas I was told to try again later.

These captchas actually miss creativity… we could create much simpler and more accessible ones – like “what day was two days before tomorrow” or “what’s the opposite color of green” and so on. One of my favourites was on a technical forum where we had to solve equations like “what’s the solution of 2*log10*exp(X)=2”? The latter also served as a kind of natural selection.